“Vote for Kibera” provides a different perspective of a shanty town in Kenya

“Vote for Kibera,” winner of the audience prize at this year’s Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, is the result of two years of working outside the box, says director Martin Pav.

When Czech non-profit worker Eva Krutilkova approached him, Pav was immediately intrigued by the challenge of portraying life in Kenya’s largest shanty town, home to at least a half-million people and intense poverty, as a world somehow full of color, art and hope, he explains.

Estimated to be the largest urban slum in Africa, official census methods measure the population of Kibera at just over 170,000, but independent groups have pegged it as high as a million-plus. Most live on less than a dollar a day, HIV and AIDS cases are rampant, and schools and healthcare are scarce.

Yet the production team, led by Zuzana Kucerova, was determined to create a fresh look at their subject wholly apart from the usual depictions, says Pav.